A Day In the Life

[City of Villains] Folks asked for a typical day in City of Villains, so here is the running account of today’s play. [edit: I have been informed that this is pretty boring. Sorry about that.]

Log in my level 39 Dark Blast/Thermal Radiation Corruptor. Friends are also in this level range (two 38 Masterminds, 35 Dominator), so I immediately join them. We run a few missions against Wailers and Circle of Thorns, then they all need to go for various reasons.

Wailers are sonic blasters. Every attack means that the next one will do more damage (-resistance debuff in all sonic attacks). Luckily, I do nice damage to them, so they tend to fall down quickly. Also, with a Dominator on the team, they do not attack as much as they might like to, and the Mastermind pets keep them off us. The AE heal is always useful in multi-Mastermind groups, and Forge (accuracy/damage buff) keeps the Dominator hitting consistently.

The Circle of Thorns is one of the most difficult and/or annoying groups in the game. I have mentioned my hatred for the spectral demons before, especially since my Dark Blasts do half damage to them. They spawn in packs, so I rely on the Mastermind’s robots to take them down (vulnerable to energy damage – go lasers!). I focus on taking out lieutenants and the Earth Thorn Casters.

I solo two missions (Wailers and a two-levels-old Carnival mission), then set the Corruptor aside. She is mostly a team-based character, and I have a while until Issue 7 brings level 40+ content. My first CoV character is still not at the level cap. I proceed slowly there, probably because I am not on one of my playing sprees lately.

Log on the level 28 Martial Arts/Regeneration Stalker. I still need to finish the Pocket D mission for the Valentine’s Day event, but Pocket D is mostly empty. I cannot do a search for heroes to team with, and my mission demands at least one hero to finish (the last target cannot be hurt by villains). Head to a Longbow mission, take out the first couple of groups and pause to type this before I start forgetting things.

As I get to this point, a friend asks if I would like to team. I mostly solo with the Stalker, but teams can be good. Looks like mostly a pickup group, but I have hope.

My main goal for this character right now is the Bling badge, If I get that before level 30, I can unlock the Doc Buzzsaw contact, where I would act as a sort of cybernetics repo-man. That’s gotta hurt…them.

The team is four Masterminds and two Stalkers. My job here is to start out each group of enemies invisible, standing next to the biggest target. When we start, I Assassin Strike him. Then I can mix between beating down targets one by one or just waiting on Hide so that I can Assassin Strike again. The Mastermind pets will keep aggro, and may even pull it from nearby groups. Oh well, at least they’ll die first if it happens, like those times we got 3+ groups.

Repeatedly. Some Masterminds have trouble working in close quarters without aggroing everything. Those binds I just posted? Use them, love them.

We just finished our first mission together. Many missions spawn ambushes, some of them multiple. Then there are the missions that spawn multiple ambushes at once, possibly because the triggers are in the same group. When a mission has multiple waves of ambushes, defeating the last enemy from one group spawns the next (usually). So say that Longbow has a captive, in the same room with the boss enemy. You take out the boss and get the captive about the same time, say 15 seconds apart. This means that you are getting waves of ambushes that far apart, usually three sets of each. You will be fighting more or less continuously for a while, unless you can clear an ambush spawn very quickly.

Message comes over our SG global chat channel, seeking members for the Katie Hannon (Croatoa) task force. We finish our mission, and I head there with the SG-mate who invited me. We get no response to asking about the TF once we’re there, so we set up our own to run Moonfire (Striga Isle). This is one of the four task force badges left for my main character to get.

My SG-mate recruits a few from another zone and we head out. The missions are pretty easy; we are almost all at the top level for the task force. We have three level 50 Blasters (auto-exemplar to 28), two Tankers, and a Controller. Things fall quickly. Aside from my trying to solo large groups (debt is irrelevant at level 50), the only death is when our controller (level 25) is ambushed from behind on the rescue mission. They kill the hostage, so we fail that mission, but we can still complete the task force. Which we do.

As usual after a task force, I log off. And then I post this, which you are reading.

So there is a several-hour binge of City of Heroes and Villains. This is the stuff that we do, bouncing from character to character. There is a Hamidon raid scheduled for tonight, so I will probably check in for that.